Tom McClintock came calling recently on Republican supporters 450 miles from the Thousand Oaks home where he is registered to vote.

But the veteran state senator – who lives primarily in Elk Grove, serves a district in Ventura County and is running for Congress in Northern California – found himself among old friends at the Alta Sierra Country Club in Grass Valley.

McClintock is one of two leading protagonists in a high-intensity Republican primary to fill the 4th Congressional District seat opening up because of Rep. John Doolittle's plans to retire amid an FBI corruption investigation.

Both McClintock and another outsider, former Sacramento-area Rep. Doug Ose, are working hard to introduce themselves in a vast district extending from suburbs of El Dorado and Placer counties to the Oregon border.

Two lesser-known hopefuls – Citrus Heights legal analyst Suzanne Jones and Grass Valley consultant Theodore Terbolizard – also seek the GOP nomination June 3.

In campaign stops, Ose and McClintock spar over who can be trusted to cut taxes. They play to fears over the economy and to the district's seeming distrust of government.

Ose rails about "government coming after our private property and our private lives." He complains about "a nation adrift" economically, calls for sound business practices and blames the current mess on career politicians epitomized by McClintock.

McClintock warns of a drift to "European-style" socialism. He criticizes current and former Republicans in Congress, including Ose, for triggering a credit crisis by shamefully abandoning "fundamental principles" in a splurge of deficit spending.

"This primary is truly a battle over the heart and soul of our party, and the contrasts could not be greater," McClintock said at the Grass Valley GOP dinner where both appeared.

Ose offered contrasts in assailing McClintock by touting his personal business acumen. "I've worked work hand and hand with people, building buildings, building communities and creating jobs," Ose said. "I'm proud to say I'm a businessman, not a career politician."

In Grass Valley, McClintock was greeted as neither a stranger nor a political carpetbagger. After all, he has campaigned in the Nevada County area during two failed runs for state controller and unsuccessful bids for lieutenant governor and governor.

"We like him very much, and what we like we vote," said supporter Betty Hood, who moved to the piney Gold Country region in the 1980s with husband John. "Whenever he (McClintock) has run, we have voted for him."

McClintock is a revered party lion to many California Republicans, renowned for stirring the base with passionate oratories quoting conservative principles from Lincoln to Churchill to Reagan.

But his huge advantage in name identification is being challenged by a $1.5 million Ose campaign portraying him as a carpetbagging, pay raise-grabbing, expense perk-supping career politician.

McClintock's mailers and radio ads answer back with charges that Ose is a free-spending, illegal immigrant-coddling liberal who sold out conservative principles in Congress.

As Ose charged up supporters before a Placer County candidates debate in Rocklin, his backers hailed him as the local favorite – or, at least, a well respected neighbor to the 4th District.

"Ose is one of us," said Placer County Supervisor Rocky Rockholm as Ose moved about the room shaking hands, cracking jokes and claiming victory is on the way. "He's been around long enough. He knows the issues. He's been a land developer here. He knows what our needs are."

In an interview at a campaign stop in Lincoln, Ose – a multimillionaire – told of starting out by buying two lots after college for duplexes in Citrus Heights. He then rattled off his development and business ties to the 4th District: a subdivision and storage warehouse in Roseville, a share of a local telecommunications firm, investments in a Placer County title company and an El Dorado Hills health spa.

Sipping ice water at an ice cream parlor in the Butte County seat of Oroville, McClintock admitted some surprise that he is even in this race. He decided to run after a GOP activist, Ted Costa, paid for a poll that showed him far ahead of the 4th District field.

"It is admittedly an unconventional move being a Southern California legislator running in a Northern California congressional district," McClintock said. "I'm sympathetic to the fact that some people think residency is an important factor. But I became convinced that this is a district that knows me."

Ose's attacks on McClintock's residency won't sway Oroville resident Joan Townsend.

"We don't care if he comes from Mars," Townsend said as McClintock appeared at an Oroville construction site for a veterans memorial. "My God, we're all imports. We really care about his record. It's good. And I'm glad he got a pay raise."

In the agricultural town where politicians don jeans and cowboy boots to court voters, McClintock made stops wearing his State House gray suit and tie, white shirt and black wingtips.

He mingled awkwardly as he discussed Second Amendment gun rights amid mounted trophies of bighorn sheep, woodland bison and Asian buffalo at Huntington Sportsman's Store. He talked about excessive taxation and paperwork at Marcozzi's downtown jewelers.

When McClintock met World War II combat veteran Homer Nelms at the memorial construction site, the history buff candidate skipped the small talk and handshakes to quote Abraham Lincoln on the sacrifice of veterans in "a nation of free men."

When retired builder and Republican activist Jim Ledgerwood complained at Oroville's Mug Shots Coffee House about unbridled spending by Republicans in Congress, McClintock launched into a story about Lord Cornwallis in England and a parliamentary crisis over trade restrictions and high taxes.

And when 22-year-old Mark Aldrich asked what he could do to help McClintock's campaign, the state senator quoted abolitionist Frederick Douglass. "Agitate, agitate, agitate," McClintock said.

Ose, whose signs throughout the district scream out "Tax Fighter!" – a reference to his support of President Bush's tax cuts – is markedly more comfortable with retail campaigning.

In downtown Auburn, he bounded into the Pizza Place, surprising a group of young employees wearing tattoos, earrings and multiple piercings.

"I'm Doug Ose," he cried out. "I'm running for Congress. Everyone come out of the kitchen!"

At Rico's Barbershop, Ose settled in for a haircut and extolled Rico Puccioni on his business ties to the district and McClintock's opportunism.

"He came in and got me squared away," Puccioni, of Auburn, said of Ose. "I don't know anything about the other guy. I just know he ran for governor and keeps on running."

The portrayal of McClintock as a perpetual candidate is a prime attack line for Ose. Yet it is a sales pitch for McClintock. At the Alta Sierra County Club, he eagerly told of seven previous times he was on the 4th District ballot in primaries, general elections and a gubernatorial recall.

"I got 36,000 more votes here running for lieutenant governor (in 2006) than Charlie Brown got running for Congress," he said, referring to the likely Democratic candidate in November. "That's not a bad place to start."